Analysis of PRT station capacity based on micro simulation

The introduction of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) has been widely discussed in the Korean transportation research field. However, there is no robust criterion to derive the throughput of cars and passengers at PRT stations, which plays a primary role in determining the overall capacity of PRT systems. The present study provided a methodology to rigorously compute the capacity for simple-serial PRT stations with a single platform, considering three decisive factors, i.e., the demand level of incoming cars and outgoing passengers, the station structure, and the operation strategy. A micro-level simulator was developed for the analysis of station capacity. And, by using this, station capacities were presented for various combinations of the decisive factors. In particular, the relationship between capacity and station structure was investigated in detail. Station structure is represented by the numbers of platform berths, input queue berths, and output queue berths. Moreover, both waive rate and waiting time, which represent the level of passenger service, were taken into account when the station throughput was computed.